Writers live mostly in their heads. It’s both blessing and curse. It means we can entertain ourselves anywhere and any time but there’s also a dark side.
Like that little girl Longfellow wrote about, “When she was good, she was very good indeed. But when she was bad, she was horrid.” That’s the mind of a writer.
I’m driving home from Vegas where was spent a most delightful weekend with Middle Chicken and Lawyer Boy. We laughed, we hung out, we ate, we drank. Oh, and I got a facial right before I left so I was driving sans makeup, which is amongst the cardinal sins.
The road is windy, twisty and my speed inches up. Suddenly my mind, twisted as a corkscrew, says, “Drive off like Thelma and Louise.” It doesn’t stop there. Imagination points to what I’ll look like, crumpled and bloody, only to have my friends say, “I’ve never seen her without makeup.”
And now they know why, don’t they? Why my friends happen to be in my car’s landing place, peering at my dead body is beyond me, but there it is.
Someone at work doesn’t say hello. She hates me. I knew it. I could tell during that meeting when she was soft talking with that other girl who never says hi. What am I–a four-year-old? At any moment, might a tantrum ensue? Of course not. I pretend not to care and cover that I may be the paranoid girl in the room.
COVID made it worse. All that time spent with only a cat and a cuckoo imagination.
How long would I be dead here in the condo before someone found me? I better clean so when they do find me because the smell has emanated through the hallway and down to the elevator, they don’t think I was a slob as well as that dead lady on the second floor.
The Norwegian was the nicest guy on the planet. Really. Sweet, mellow, loyal–great dad and husband. Far better than I deserved. In my dreams, he’s a cheater who was mean to me and has chosen not to see his children. Yes, he’s dead. But, somehow, my mind holds him responsible for lack of parental visits. I’m really pissed my brain matter turned him into a philandering bad boy. Thanks mind conjurings.
A bit ago, just for fun (there really is only so much on Netflix) I started to keep track. There’s a pattern. The wild rumpus of imaginings are always the worst scenario, the scariest of outcome and the nastiest of people. A pessimist I am not. I am generally cheery and bright. So, are these imagined scenarios a way to cope with having to stay home for a year?
Can’t be. The last year was a dream come true. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video. And there it is. Someone flicked on the lightbulb above my head. I filled the year’s empty space with serial killers, murder mysteries and one psycho known as The Serpent. Perhaps a brain can only take so much mayhem before it cries out, “Enough.”
Perhaps. But, maybe, it’s a sign. I’m supposed to write all this down and make an actual living worthy of the shoes I’m wearing when I croak in a bloody basin crash.
The Duchess Diaries 